ZfdA 139 (2010), S. 131

Mittelalter-Philologie im Internet

35. Beitrag: Digitising the Codex Argenteus and its editions

von Lars Munkhammar

Since a couple of years Uppsala University Library runs a project with the aim to digitise and publish the Codex Argenteus and its printed editions. The project was originally meant to serve scholars and students of philology interested in the Gothic language. But also historians, archaeologists, and others interested in the Gothic script and culture can benefit from the project.

The inventor and initiator of the project is David Landau, MA, MSc, in Tampere, Finland. In his master thesis at Tampere University of Technology 2003, 'Digitising Text Heritage', he made a first plan and description of the actual project. At that time, Landau had already scanned, coded, and indexed the 1927 edition of Codex Argenteus, a kind of pilot project, that made it possible to display the text on the Internet via the website of Uppsala University Library.

Magnús Snædal, Professor of General Linguistics at University of Iceland, was very soon involved in the project. His specialist competence regarding the Gothic language made him fit for supervising the philological aspects of the project - his comprehensive inventory 'A Concordance to Biblical Gothic' (1998) is a standard work in Gothic philology.

The project has been possible to realise thanks to funds from Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (The Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation). The foundation has provided the main financing of the project. It will result in a digital depiction of the Codex Argenteus and its editions. One of the project ideas is to make it easier to compare the different readings of the Gothic text in the different editions both to each other and to the scanned original manuscript.

David Landau has planned the indexing of the scanned material, and he has also indexed great parts of it. The different editions will be generally annotated in philological respect by Magnús Snædal. My part is to give a general book-historical introduction about the Codex Argenteus and its printed editions (about ten books published between the 16th and the 20th centuries).

The result of the project will be published on the website of Uppsala University Library during 2010.